“How could you take a man’s life to save $20 on a TV?”

The darker side of Christmas has been illustrated by the tragic news that on Black Friday, traditionally the first day of the American Christmas shopping season, a man was trampled to death by shoppers looking for a good deal.

A worker at the Long Island branch of Wal-Mart was trampled to death on Black Friday when the doors opened at 5am to let shoppers in. They burst through the doors, sending employees and other members of the public flying, paying no heed as they trampled over them in their desperate rush to get their hands on the weekend-only deals.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

“They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.

“They took me down, too … I didn’t know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back,” Overby said.

But did they stop, did humanity seep back into their consciousness?

No.

Individual members of the public stopped to help the injured but the mob carried on regardless.

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like “savages.”

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!'” Cribbs said. “They kept shopping.”

Doesn’t it make you sick?

Thanks to Cathy at Maternal Gardens for alerting me to this story. As she says,

Why? Was it really worth the 20, 30, 40% off? That man, who was trampled to death by greedy, gluttonous, ignorant, rude, pathetic holiday shoppers looking for a “deal”, will not get to celebrate the holiday with his family and I pray he didn’t have children.